Rob Bignell's Blog, page 324

Get your book before potential buyers’ eyes

One of the great challenges of marketing your book is getting is before potential buyers’ eyes. This can be done via the Kindle ebook bestsellers list on Amazon.com at a limited cost to you. Here’s how.

First, the very same day that your ebook is available for sale, peruse the top 20 bestselling ebooks in the category that your title would appear. Identify three or four that are very similar to your title; you may need to go through the top 40 or even top 60 to find those books. Next, purchase a copy of those three or four titles. Then buy a copy of your own book.

When others call up those three or four bestselling books’ pages at Amazon.com, the odds are good that your new title will show up in the section entitled “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”. Your title also likely will appear below the reviews in a section entitled “What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?”

If you can get a few others (such as family members and close friends) to do this as well, you further increase the odds that your title will appear on these other books’ sales pages. This is especially true in categories where the number of books sold on an hourly basis is low or that have few titles for sale.

While that alone won’t gaurantee book sales, it does improve the chances of them. After all, more people – especially those interested in titles just like yours – are apt to see your ebook. Further, people who compare books to make the best lone purchase hopefully will see that your title is less expensive yet just as informative and so select your ebook over the bestseller. Some potential readers may make multiple purchases or sample your book, the latter of which can lead to some sales. These ales in turn can push your title onto the bestseller list, which usually guarantees additional purchases.

Is this rigging the system? No more so than big publishing houses that buy shelf space in chain bookstores at entranceways and on endcaps to get people to see their authors’ books. In any case, the real determinant of how well your book sells will depend on its quality. If a couple of people buy your book (because they saw it on page for a bestselling book) but you fail to deliver content or have dozens of typos, they’ll probably write bad reviews and give it one or two stars – which ultimately hurts your sales.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like San Jose, California, or a small town like Boar Tush, Alabama, I can provide that second eye.

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How to determine your ebook’s price

Among the big decisions you’ll make when publishing your ebook (and your paperback, for that matter) is what price to charge. If priced too high, you’ll decrease your sales to zero. If priced too low, you’ll miss out on revenue.

Before examining what factors to consider in determining your ebook’s price, recognize that readers expect to pay less for an ebook than they do for a paperback. After all, the paperback requires trees, ink, printing presses, and labor to produce and send it; an ebook doesn’t (Well, the labor largely is limited to a few compter and software techs.). Paperbacks that I charge $10 for go for $2 as an ebook. As of this writing, most ebook prices average 99 cents to $2.99.

Your ebook’s price also will in part be bounded by whichever print on demand company you go with. Most set a minimum price to cover their overhead and to make a tidy profit. For example, currently Kindle DP won’t let you sell a book below 99 cents unless you enroll it in special programs the company offers.

Once you know the minimum price you can charge, determine your costs by considering these factors:
g Competition’s prices – Identify the prices of a dozen books very similar to yours in topic and file size that are available for sale at Amazon.com. Making a chart listing the title/file size/price is useful. Now fit your book into that chart for file size and undercut the competition’s listed price. That is, if your book is 275 KB and the other books at or above that file length sell for $1.99, set the price at $1.89.
g Set your goals – Is your goal to establish yourself as an author or have you already done so? If the former, then keep your price low, even though that means your royalty payments will be less in the short run. That’s because low prices help generate sales that pushes your ebook higher into Amazon.com’s rankings, which in turn will generate more sales. If you’re already established, you can go for a higher price and hence higher percentage of royalties (At Kindle DP, ebooks set above $2.99 garner 70% royalties while those below that price earn 35% royalties.) knowing that a built-in audience is willing to pay for your books.
g Ensure a profit and respectability – Don’t reduce your price to the point where you earn mere pennies for your ebook. You must keep your book somewhat above the minimum price that your print on demand provider requires. Hence, if the minimum price of your book is 99 cents, don’t charge a dollar for it. You’d have to sell a hundred books to make a mere dollar. And those 100 sales will be tough as many readers will wonder if your book is of questionable quality as it is priced so low.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like San Francisco, California, or a small town like Nimrod, Oregon, I can provide that second eye.

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How to properly punctuate dialogue

Dialogue is vital in most fiction as it conveys characters’ motivations and provides information the reader must know to move along the story. Getting the punctuation of dialogue right then is of the utmost importance. Afterall, a misplaced or forgotten quotation mark can confuse readers about what is said and who said it.

When punctuating dialogue, follow these basic rules:

Place a quotation mark before what is spoken.
“Hello, Johnson residence. 

Place quotation mark at end of what is spoken.
“Hello, Johnson residence.”

If telling who is speaking (aka attribution) after a spoken line of dialogue, use a comma before the closing quotation mark.
“Hello, Johnson residence,” Mary said.

Then lowercase the first word after the closing quotation mark (unless it’s a proper noun).
“Hello, Johnson residence,” said Mary.

If a question mark or an exclamation mark appears at the end of what’s spoken, there's no need for the comma.
“Hello, Johnson residence; who is this please?” said Mary.

If the character continues to speak, keep the dialogue in the same paragraph and use a new quotation mark.
“Hello, Johnson residence,” said Mary. “How many I help you?

…And close it up with a quotation mark.
“Hello, Johnson residence,” said Mary. “How many I help you?”

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Arlington, Texas, or a small town like Chicken, Alaska, I can provide that second eye.

 

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Editing client publishes first novel, ‘Pushing Past’

A recent editing client of mine from the Minneapolis area, Catie Shae, has published her first novel. “Pushing Past” tells the tale of young and beautiful, Charlee Tyler, a girl trapped in a woman’s body. With her past never being history and her future always lurking, she learned to be a follower and comes to believe that decisions made for her are so much easier than those she makes for herself. But with the help of her best friend and a certain somebody she never expected to see again, Charlee overcomes her dark past and develops a new life she had never thought possible – a life that might actually be worth living. “Pushing Past” is available for purchase online.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like New York, New York, or a small town like Bantam, Connecticut, I can provide that second eye.

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Avoid white room syndrome when writing

Establishing the setting at the beginning of a story is no easy task. Imagining a world – especially one for the science fiction and fantasy genres – involves thinking about every aspect of its sights, sounds, scents and even tastes and feel.

Rather than fully imagine such a world, some writers instead create a quick, unformed facsimile of their own. For example, they start the story with the line, “She awoke in a white room.” The white room is the white piece of paper facing the author. This is known as white room syndrome, a term coined a few year ago at the Turkey City Workshop in Austin (a group that has included authors William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, Rudy Rucker and Walter Jon Williams).
 
They officially define white room syndrome as “an authorial imagination inadequate to the situation at end, most common at the beginning of a story.” In short, because the world wasn’t fully imagined, it can’t support the story that unfolds from it.

Sometimes this occurs because a writers’ inspiration for the story is from a setting in which he found himself. If the writer takes some extra time to think about and develop this world, however, such inspiration can be put to good effect. This is the case in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

White room syndrome also can occur because some writers believe that they should simply start writing and let the world evolve from there, à la the Beat writers’ approach. Sometimes this technique does work, but all too often the writers misses the full potential of this kernel of a setting that is planted in the opening line. Even worse, the writer creates an inconsistent setting because he haphazardly creates a new world.

The lesson here: Think a lot about and fully develop your setting before committing to it.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like St. Louis, Missouri, or a small town like Cheesequake, New Jersey, I can provide that second eye.

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Five Great Quotations about Revising

“My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.” - Anton Chekhov

“I have written - often several times - every word I have ever published.” - Vladimir Nabokov

“The writer who cannot sometimes throw away a thought about which another man would have written dissertations, without worry whether or not the reader will find it, will never become a great writer.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

“It is my contention that a really great novel is made with a knife and not a pen. A novelist must have the intestinal fortitude to cut out even the most brilliant passage so long as it doesn't advance the story.” - Frank Yerby

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you reside in a big city like Tampa or a small town like Calypso, North Carolina, I can provide that second eye.

 

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Use confidant to reveal hero's inner turmoil

Sometimes to reveal the protagonist’s inner conflict, he shares his thoughts with another character. This character who the protagonist trusts is referred to as a confidant (or a confidante if a female).

A confidant often is someone who shares a special relationship with the protagonist – a brother, an old friend, a doctor, a parental figure. Some famous confidants include: Sam Gamgee for Frodo Baggins in “The Lord of the Rings”; Maria Temple for Jane Eyre; and Dr. McCoy for Captain Kirk in “Star Trek: The Original Series.”

When speaking with a confidant, the protagonist might reveal his:
g State of mind
g Intentions
g Secrets
g Personal problems
g Character flaws
g Feelings
g Personal fears

What is revealed ought to be key to moving the plot forward. Generally, if the inner conflict doesn’t inhibit the protagonist from resolving the story’s central problem, then it serves little purpose.
In addition, the confidant ought to be more than a wall that is spoken to. The confidante should provide support, insight into what he is told, play devil’s advocate, or perform some other function that helps shape the protagonist’s decision and hence helps move the plot forward.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.

 

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Hold contest to get more reviews of your book

Once you’ve published a book, one way to generate sales is to obtain positive book reviews on sites like Amazon.com and Goodreads. Not just any review will do, however. You want reviews that are meaningful, written by people who actually read and were interested in your book (Usually readers can tell when a reviewer isn’t genuine.). You also want a lot of reviews, for the more they are, the more likely they are to generate sales.

One to generate those reviews is to hold a contest.

A currently trendy contest among self-published authors – probably gaining traction because of sites like Story Cartel – enters readers who write a review of your book into a drawing for a free ereader (typically a Kindle). Readers can download your book either for free from a specific site or must make a verified purchased of the book before their review qualifies them as an entrant.

To make this contest work, you'll need to do some promotional work. Start by posting a blog entry a about the contest a couple of days before it begins and then send links to the entry via your social media platforms, such as Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and so on.

Some authors have reported up to a hundred reviews added to their sites via this effort. Of course, the downside is that some reviews – because they are honest – may be negative (But that also can be a good thing!).

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like San Jose, California, or a small town like Boar Tush, Alabama, I can provide that second eye.

 

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Editing client publishes novel about basic training

A long-time editing client of mine, Robert Lovelle Rooks, has published his fifth book, “The Guidon Bearer.” The book is a journey through Air Force basic training circa Year 2000 that many Air Force veterans will find familiar, other service-members will be able to relate to, and everyone will find entertaining and informative. Indeed, all veterans have their stories, all veterans have their experiences, but one thing is for sure: They’ll all remember basic training. The book is available online.

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Denver, Colorado, or a small town like Dewey Beach, Delaware, I can provide that second eye.

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Take the road right: Traveled vs. travelled

When deciding which spelling of these two words to use, always travel light if in America.

American English uses one l when spelling traveling, traveled, etc.: “The president traveled to China.”

British English uses two l’s, as in travelling, travelled, etc.: “The queen travelled to India.”

Need an editor? Having your book, business document or academic paper proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. Whether you come from a big city like Dallas, Texas, or if you come from a small town Why, Arizona, I can provide that second eye.

 

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